


dust to dust

by Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: AU Leia is the Same Age as Cassian, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Angst, F/M, Force-Sensitive Leia Organa, Mutual Pining, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sad with a Happy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-03
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:53:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24516454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome/pseuds/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome
Summary: They call her the Last Princess of Alderaan, the last light of a now-faded beacon. But for one man, she is so much more than that.
Relationships: Cassian Andor/Leia Organa
Comments: 3
Kudos: 7





	dust to dust

They call her the Last Princess of Alderaan.

The title is whispered, murmured in mess halls, echoed in the empty halls of the Massassi temple. The princess walks the same route each day, pausing by the same closed door. No one knows, nor seeks to understand her route. No one who still lives on the base knows who lived behind that simple door, could name the man who last closed it, walking resolutely from on the day he went to Scarif. No one knows why the princess lingers there, in a forgotten hallway, in an empty wing of the base. 

Instead, they almost begin to think of her as a ghost, though her broken heart yet beats. But what else could they compare her to, when she is so ethereal in her white gown, weighed down by her heavy cloak, pinned at the shoulders with gleaming silver medallions, each one bearing the royal crest of a palace shattered into a thousand mites of space dust. What other place could one such as her hold, when she has no planet, no place to rule from, and yet, seems to have no place here, among them, either. Sometimes, it seems as if she might join them as if she might sit by them as they eat, or work with them as they repair ships. But then, she hesitates, and the yearning for all that is lost blooms once more on her face.

If it is not her aching yearning that keeps others away, it is the fear of what else may one day be seen in her eyes. 

The Last Princess of Alderaan. The name carries so much grief, and yet, just as much awe. Because the Last Princess still stands, still walks among them all.

She had killed Vader herself, the stories say.

Taken his own blood-red lightsaber and drove it through his heart.

Stopped him from destroying Yavin IV.

Stopped him from crushing the Rebellion.

But she hadn’t been able to stop him when the Death Star had first been trained on Jedha. She hadn’t known of it then. None of them had. And she hadn’t been able to stop her own planet’s destruction, either.

The dust of Alderaan had turned to fire in her heart. She had burned bright enough to ignite, bright enough to save the cause that her own father had died to protect. She had burned and burned and burned, until Vader was gone and the Death Star was gone and every hateful thing had been silenced. But after the mission was done, the fire had faded once more.

Now, the Last Princess walks among the gathered Rebels like a ghost, her white gown rippling from her shoulders. It’s as bright as bone and as cold as moonlight on snow. The crowds part when she appears. Voices silence when she opens her mouth to greet them

They call her the Last Princess of Alderaan, but they do not speak to her.

But all of that changes when a battered U-Wing crashes onto the landing pad in front of the Temple.

In front of the Princess.

She often stands there, waiting, waiting, as if she is called to greet the delegations of the dead who surely will someday return to haunt this temple turned base they once called home.

She stands there, alone, silent, her dress so white and her gaze so cold.

But there is nothing silent, nothing ghostly about the crew that spills out of the ship. They are survivors, yes, and perhaps some might call them heroes. They don’t refer to themselves as such a lofty title, though. All they are is friends, companions forged in a fire that had destroyed everything else.

They are Rogue One, and they are home.

Leia sees the droid first. If his massive frame reminds her of the similarly-shaped droids who had once been her cell guards, her face shows none of that fear. Or, if her eyes catch that this is none other than the droid who had protected her dear friend on so many missions, they do not light up with hope.

Her face shows nothing at all.

She is the Last Princess of Alderaan and she has made loss her closest friend.

Next appears a pair, one armored with every scrap of protective metal he could find, and the other protected by a far greater power. Leia does not know them, and yet, a small part of her feels as if she has been seen in a way she has not been in a long time.

The man with the staff bows his head to her. Then, he says, “princess, tomorrow, we will begin your training to walk along the Path.”

The path. A word so small, and yet, capable of so much. It feels as if it has been forever since she has had a Path forward. Her actions on the Death Star had come from a sudden wildness within her. It had not been careful, nor calculated, what she had done.

She had felt the Force, for only a second, before she cursed its name and closed her mind to it.Because to feel it was to feel the loss of an entire planet. To feel it was to be not alone.

The Last Princess of Alderaan has been alone each day since returning home, and it has been long enough that she has begun to believe the lie that it is better to be alone. The only path she had followed was that slow aching route each day, as she traced her many last moments. Her last goodbye to her father. Her last communication with her mother. Her last time looking at a view screen and seeing her brilliant, warm planet. And of course, each day, her path ended there, where she had had her first and last kiss, at the closed door of a man who had promised it was not goodbye.

Two more tired soldiers emerge from the ship. A woman and a man, supporting each other. The woman is pale, with features as sharp as a vibroblade. The man, with dark skin and warm eyes, has no sharpness, only gentleness as he supports his friend.

And when he lifts his gaze to meet hers, the Last Princess of Alderaan staggers backward.

It hits her as strong as an asteroid can hit a planet. That she is not alone in losing her planet, her family. That the Death Star’s mockery of light had burned more than just her glittering home to dust.

Yet this man, staring back at her, did not turn to ice when his planet burned. Instead, he seems to glow, now, the way a moon reflects the light of the sun. She knows in that deep, bone-sure way that comes from the Force she refuses to name, that this man, this pilot, had been braver than many could dream of.

This time, the Last Princess of Alderaan bows her head, showing her respect to the last son of Jedha. She understands now, as well, that the two others, the warriors now standing to her right, they too had lost their home, their planet. She bows and offers them the respect of her station, the quiet solitary acknowledgment of their pain.

Though, as her head remains bowed, her thoughts leap forward. Something cracks within her, like the first fissure in a glacier about to break. To lose a planet is to be alone forever, she has thought. 

But they are not alone.

And when finally, finally, one more person emerges from the battered ship that has made its last flight, Leia knows that she is not alone, either.

If the Rebels who had whispered about her before could see her now, they would have a great deal to talk about.

Because the Last Princess of Alderaan is _running._ Racing forward, her gown hiked up like a girl sprinting through fields of wildflowers, desperate to reach the man who stands in front of her.

The Last Princess of Alderaan is _smiling._ Bright and beaming, the wide-eyed joy of someone who still has love to give and a heart to offer.

And most impossibly, the Last Princess of Alderaan is _crying._ Tears fall from her eyes for the first time since the day she boarded the Tantive IV. Grief, the healing sort that shines bright enough to cauterize long-festering wounds, spills from her, making her smile wobble, and yet, seem all the brighter.

And the man, the tired, lonely man, who had used up his own fire so many times that he seems to smolder in his very soul, burning low and dimly and yet, still burning all the more for the cause,

Cassian isn’t the last anything of Fest. His planet suffered, and suffered, and still suffers, but it is the slow, perennial ache of a planet fading into dust. It’s a destruction caused by countless outside political parties, a destruction that cannot be stopped by something as simple as killing a Sith Lord.

But Cassian is the first man from Fest to have loved a woman from Alderaan. And he loves her still. Even if she has killed a Sith Lord, wielding a power she still doesn’t understand. Even if she is more ice than warmth, now. Even if he feels as if he might himself turn to dust, if she touches him.

Because he is tired, so very tired, of burning and fighting and never giving up. A fire can only burn until the fuel is out. After that, there is nothing but ash. Ash and darkness and a silence that blots out the stars.

But now, the stars are bright and they are right there, shining in her eyes as she looks into his. Does she see a spark yet in him? Cassian hopes she does. He hopes, as he does after every mission, that the man she loves is still there, inside of him. Dusty from being tucked away, hidden safely inside the part of his heart that carries all his humanity when he is tasked with the shadowy deeds that make a Rebellion grow, but there, all the same.

Cassian finds a smile. Better yet, he finds his smile to be true.

And best of all, the princess’s smile matches his own. He touches her cheek. She’s not cold to to the touch, even if her gown is made of snow and her posture carved from ice. “You survived,” he says.

“So did you,” she replies.

“I had to.” He shrugs, as if it was not any sort of struggle to return to the base. As if the mission had never been one that only a dead man should take. “I promised.”

“So did I,” she replies, leaning into him.

When they kiss, it is shy and soft, the gentle kiss that seals a promise kept and a hope found. Their second kiss, though, is one that is desperately burning, one that comes from yearning and yearning, from despair being unfounded and darkness being driven away. It’s the sort of kiss that could ignite the stars, or teach a sun to burn.

His arms encircle her, pulling her into his orbit. The cloak slips from her shoulders, and with it, it seems, the weight of a lost world. Now, she is delicate and light, not cold at all, but rather, so, so alive. And he too, he is alive, against all odds, against all fate. Cassian kisses her forehead, the third sort of kiss, the one that creates a thousand new hopes for the future. She is safe now, and he is home.

They call her the Last Princess of Alderaan.

They say she burned too brightly. That her fire is too fierce, even for the Rebellion.

They call her the Last Princess of Alderaan, the lonely last beacon of a world now gone.

But Cassian knows her as the guiding star that led him home, the compass point that steered him off of Scarif. Her light is bright enough for him to warm himself, as if it is a hearth fire in a home he dreams of someday sharing with her.

Cassian knows she is not alone, not now. He has returned to her.

To him, Leia is not the last of anything, but rather, she is the first light of hope.


End file.
